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Award-Winning Collection of Essays by Prof. Amy Benson Slated to Publish in May

April 4, 2017

Seven Years to Zero, new work by Rhodes College creative nonfiction professor Amy Benson, is slated to publish in May. Winner of Dzanc Books Nonfiction Prize, Seven Years to Zero is a collection of essays that traces the lives of a couple as they move to a dense metropolis and become immersed in making and viewing art. As they contemplate having a child, fears of environmental collapse grow and become intertwined with the artistic project to imagine a future without the despair and nostalgia endemic to environmentalism. The collection ends with Hurricane Sandy and the Hundred Year Flood that swamped many galleries in the city.

Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat Only When You’re Hungry, says, “Just as art shows us the truth in ourselves—in being human—that is beyond words, each chapter in this novel holds the key to a door we thought we’d forgotten. Benson has painted a dystopian dreamscape. . . . It feels like a precious object you stumble upon and you can’t look away.”